Sasquatch Festival Quilt
I recently finished a really fun quilt commission, which has now been given to its new owner. Who is actually the founder of the Sasquatch Music Festival.
This music festival, which began in 2002, happens during Memorial Day weekend, here in the the Pacific Northwest. 2018 was the last year of this festival, and the founder’s wife wanted to create a quilt of all the t-shirts the family still had from the festival. Each year’s shirts had a rendering of a Sasquatch-like character, done by some very talented illustrators, and a band list.
The Design
My task was to keep the shirts in chronological order, starting from 2002 till now. The client also requested that I keep the band lists uncut. Long-time readers may know that making straight square blocks out of t-shirt graphics is really not my jam. I prefer to create interesting shapes. The challenge in a design like this is to create some cohesion among components that don’t really coordinate. The artwork of the t’s, which is a true snapshot of this iconic festival, needed to stand out first and foremost.
To preserve each t-shirt’s band list in full and still be able to play with some of the proportions, I designed an alternating block layout. The first row A-B-A-B-A, then B-A-B-A-B in the next row, and so on. The quilt measures 60 x 60″ square. The quilt contains all the t-shirts given to me, with the exception of one duplicate t, and one that said “This Band Sucks”, which let’s be honest, that is really too good to cut into.
The placement of the shirts and colors are purely by year. The top left black t is the first year of the Sasquatch Festival, and the years run across the rows and down. The clusters of light blue in the top right and reds in the bottom left are my favorite parts. Where I did use color strategically was to create the “circular blocks”. If the large solid block next to it was black, I would put black on that edge of the “circle shape”. This creates almost a star shape, or at least the abstract beginnings of one, in some spots.
The red circles indicate “star sides”, created using color, contrast, and shape.
There’s plenty of strong value contrast around most of the star shapes. But not all of them, because there was is no need for this to be a traditional quilt design.
I had so much fun making this quilt. Its wonderful to quilts to preserve these memories.
I only take a few of these commissions a year, but truly love doing them. If you are interested in discussing commission possibilities, head over here.